Those Who Favour Fire
by Sanjuno Shori Niko
Summary: Taking the deal offered by Fate, yielded up by the Sea, Ace keeps his promise to his little brother and survives. Alive, and with a baby brother to protect, Ace is not yet sure if he is meant to save the world, or destroy it. All he does know is that come what may... he will hold with those that favour fire. Ace survives Marineford, but not in the way anyone suspects.
1. Ace wakes up

**_Those Who Favour Fire_**

 _A One Piece Fanfiction_

By: Sanjuno Shori Niko

=/=

 **(In which Portgas D Ace wakes up.)**

Portgas D Ace had never expected to open his eyes again. The infamous D luck had finally run out for him. All of his crimes and failures catching up to him at last in the form of a magma fist through his torso. His only lingering regret was that Luffy would carry the memory of Ace's death. Ace would rather have spared his precious baby brother that pain.

A flicker of gold light, like a single candle flame striving to drive back the cursed darkness.

Ace did not remember opening his eyes, but he reached out for that tiny flame despite his disorientation. It responded eagerly to his will, just like every other flame since Ace had discovered and eaten the Mera Mera no Mi. The flame grew, and spread, blanketing the surface of the dark, rippling sea that rose and fell in gentle swells under his bare feet with a thousand licks of fire. The light raced over the water, like dawn raced the stars, clinging and climbing over sand-crusted bare feet and skirts that swirled like sea foam.

She wore seashells in her wavy hair, skin tanned dark by the sun and teeth salt white against a crimson smile. She was his mother and his mistress, his first and forever love. The Goddess of the Sea frowned in unfeigned disappointment, eying the cut-short string that hung limp from Ace's ring finger. Fate ignored her sister-goddess' displeasure as she packed away her golden shears. A flame coloured thread was pulled loose from another nearby weave and offered up for consideration. Ace swallowed, caught between a new destiny and the deep blue sea. His string of fate was ragged and grey, his flame flickering lower with every swiftly passing eternity. He was dead, yes, but he was a D, and _nothing_ could deny the true will of D. Not even death.

 _"YOU PROMISED! ACE!"_

In the end, it was the chance to see his brother again that helped Ace make his final choice. Decided, Ace reached out and plucked the fruit from the Goddess' hands.

It burned like embers against his lips, and tasted like freedom on his tongue.

/.../

Ace licked the juice from his lips, tasting fish oil and salt, and had to fight back a surge of nausea. He forced his eyes open with a frown, gaze skittering around the circular room he both did and did not recognize. It was the tree house from his childhood, only not, and large enough for an adult to stand in. Ace slid out of bed, limbs weak and shaky as hunger clawed at his guts.

A sniffle and a choked whimper pulled Ace over to the door. He thought he was ready for what lay on the other side of the canvas drape. Eventually the Universe would tire of proving all his preconceptions wrong. (Probably. Maybe. Never.)

'Tiny.' Was Ace's first, stunned thought. 'Too thin.' Was the second. Ace's mouth was dry, his lips cracked. The flame logia was uniquely familiar with the symptoms of dehydration, but the way every movement ground tiny glass shards into his muscles and bones was a new and highly unpleasant experience.

"Lu... Luffy?" Ace's knees hit the rough wood planks hard enough to leave bruises. The straw hat adorned head whipped around, wide black eyes full of tears and shocked desperation as they locked on Ace's freckled face.

"Ace? Ace!" His little brother's rubbery body rocketed into his chest, fresh tears smearing over the raw, open mess of badly-bandaged wounds. Ace shoved the pain into a far corner of his mind to deal with later. Later, because right now Luffy's voice was cracked and broken and _wrong_ as Ace clamped his arms around his baby brother, wrapping the younger D up in a protective hold as Luffy wailed. "I thought Niichan was dead! I thought I'd be alone again forever! Ace, I was so scared!"

"Oi, Luffy, oi… c'mon, don't cry. I promised you, ne? I'll never die." Ace did not know how it was possible, but Luffy was seven again. The same age he had been when Garp forced the younger of his grandsons into Dadan's resentful care. It was like travelling through time, because Ace was still in his twenty-one year old body, and Luffy hardly weighed anything at all even with the weakness in Ace's limbs. "It's gonna be okay, little brother. Niichan's right here."

Ace let Luffy cry himself out without commenting on it. This led to Ace holding a sleeping Luffy in his arms, staring up through the branches at the stars above Dawn Island while Luffy sniffled and dozed. There were clumsy bandages wrapped around Luffy's chest. A match for the cloth binding the wounds Ace could feel pulling in his torso as he carried the little boy back into the tree house. Ace frowned at the damage he could see staining the wraps on his younger brother. The older D had his own share of aches and pains. Not the least of which was the ragged sunburst of burned tissue that tunneled through Ace's chest.

' _Sakazuki_.' Ace's lips twisted into a snarl that no small number of corrupted Marines and Blackguard pirates would run screaming at the sight of.

Things were wrong. Luffy was so young, and Ace was too old to still be in East Blue (eleven years too young, four years too old) but Ace knew where his new scar had come from. Luffy's madcap scramble to rescue Ace from execution had left its own marks on the rubber boy, and somehow this smaller Luffy had acquired the same wounds. At least superficially. The Luffy that Ace had died to protect had pushed himself so far over the edge he had gone hurtling over brand new ones. Hopefully this tinier (weaker, more fragile) Luffy had not gone quite that crazy.

'Conqueror's Haki.' Ace mused, smoothing antibiotic cream over the deep gouges that crossed over each other to form a giant X on Luffy's chest. The wounds went from the boy's collarbone to the bottom of his ribcage on the opposite side, almost perfectly symmetrical. Ace pulled a fresh roll of bandages out of the over-sized (D sized) first aid kit Makino had put together for Luffy (and Ace and Sabo) and refreshed every time she came to visit. Shaking his head to knock unwelcome thoughts loose, Ace wrapped Luffy's now-cleaned wounds properly. The logia user scowled at the amount of skin covered by sterile white. Luffy was in bad shape. Not quite bad enough for Ace to panic and hunt down a real doctor like a rabid hellhound, but bad enough that Ace was going to rip anyone who looked cross-eyed at his brother (his tiny, adorable, _squishy_ little baby brother) into shreds and them cremate the pieces. The over-protective big-brother reflex Ace had on a normal day was bad enough (Smoker was _damned lucky_ he was as honest and honorable as his reputation labeled him. Otherwise Ace would have _smashed him into paste_ for hunting his brother.) After seeing Luffy almost die for him, having memories of Sabo's death dragged up, and now with Luffy so small and vulnerable...

Ace knew his own issues well enough to anticipate how savage he was going to be for a while. Ace would get over it eventually. Probably. Maybe. He would be able to hide it better by the time Luffy turned seventeen again at least. Which brought Ace's thoughts circling around to the main point again as he treated his own wounds. (Worse than Luffy's, borderline-actually _fatal_ , but he could feel the power of his logia erasing the heat damage and burns even as he cleaned them out.) Ace watched Luffy sleeping peacefully in the flickering light of a single lamp. 'Luffy can use Conqueror's Haki. I'm going to have to train him.'

Conqueror's Haki was not as rare as the Marines wanted to believe. Ace could use it. So could Marco, Whitebeard, Shanks, and a few of the stronger Shichibukai. Sighing quietly, a pang of sorrow wrenched at Ace's bruised and scalded heart at the thought of Whitebeard and his crew. Ace had not gathered enough courage to check, but he had the feeling that his back was bare of Whitebeard's mark. (So strange to have his logia abilities in East Blue but not his tattoos. Sabo's memorial was the same, but he had gotten that one done before leaving home.) Luffy had not been surprised by Ace's age in contrast to his own, which meant that Luffy was _expecting_ Ace to be so much older than him. 'This isn't the world I'm used to. I died back there and now... I've truly lost everything… _everyone_ … except Luffy... _this_ Luffy. _My_ Luffy is gone now too...'

Scoffing at his own dramatic melancholy, Ace slid into the pallet next to his snoring baby brother and curled defensively around Luffy's so-much smaller form. 'If Luffy's seven, then he's just eaten his fruit this year. That means Shanks is on his way back to the New World to stay, once he recovers from losing his arm. Of course, that's assuming that Luffy's timeline hasn't been changed. There's so much I don't understand...'

Why was Luffy so young? How had they been injured so badly on Dawn Island? Ace and Luffy had reached the top of the local food chain before they hit puberty. How was Ace still alive? (Alive again, maybe?) Exhausted by the questions whirling around and around in his head without answers, Ace snuffed out the lantern without moving. Thoughts a confused jumble of trailing threads, Ace looked at the tiny flame he had drawn over to his palm. Sleep had never looked more attractive. Ace closed his fist, dousing the flame. He shut his eyes, determined to sleep and avoid thinking for a while no matter what his chronic insomnia had to say about it.

/.../

( _Marines? What the fuck are Marines doing here? Kuso-jiji is the only one who bothers to come this far East of the main shipping lines and he was just here a few months ago. Whatever, at least it's not my job to deal with them. Poor old Whoop-slap._ )

It's my fault...

( _What the_ fuck _? Why? Why the hell would they shoot Whoop-slap? He hates us! Hates bandits and pirates and fuck, I know he was a rude old bastard to everyone but that wasn't a reason to_ kill him _! Oh shit. Shit! LUFFY!_ )

They died because of me...

( _Quiet, Luffy. You_ have to _stay quiet. For Niichan, okay? I know you're worried about Makino-san, but if the Marine's know we're here they'll hurt more people. They'll hurt Makino-san for not being on their team. You don't want Makino-san to get in trouble, right? So just stay here and be super quiet, okay?_ )

Just because I was born...

( _No. No! Let him go! He's not important, just some brat who follows me around. Wants to be a forester, so I let him tag along when I go hunting. I don't even know who his parents are._ )

Luffy, I'm so sorry...

( _Yeah. I'll go quietly._ )

I never should have trusted them...

( _Everyone. They killed_ everyone _. Why?_ Why? _None of them knew who my father was! Fuck you, you jackass, I'm just a fur trader! I want nothing to do with my fucking father or his fucking legacy! You shitheads are_ worse _than the fucking pirates! At least they'll admit to being goddamned murderers!_ )

Whoop-slap. Dadan. Makino... just because I was here. Luffy... why didn't you run?

( _No. No, no, NO! Not Luffy! GET AWAY FROM HIM!_ )

... Thank you for loving me, little brother...

/.../

Ace looked up at the shadowy figure looming over him, edges barely illuminated by starlight. A few absentminded sparks made the picture clearer, but no less confusing than his dream (nightmare.) Younger by three or four years (seventeen. He was, had been, only _seventeen_.) Paler from a life spent under a canopy of trees rather than years on the deck of a ship. Different scars. A few inches shorter and a dozen pounds of muscle lighter. No tattoos except for Sabo's memorial. No _hat_. They eyes and the freckles and the burning _anger_ at the world's bullshit, though... that much was still the same.

"So, are you why I'm here?" Ace sat up and stared at his ghostly doppelganger. "Or are you just here for Luffy?"

 _"It was my fault._ " The specter looked pained in a way that had nothing to do with the bloody ruin of his chest, his grey eyes locked on the little boy curled into Ace's hip. " _If I'd left on my birthday like I promised Sabo... if I hadn't stayed..._ "

"The Marines want to kill Luffy for who his father is too, you know." Ace's smile was more of a grimace. "If you hadn't been there you know that the little idiot would've started screaming about being the Pirate King. Combine that with being Revolutionary Dragon's son and I don't think even Gramps could've kept them issuing the kill order."

The ghost blinked in surprise, then looked at Luffy with refreshed worry. " _So that's why they looked for him. I thought it was me, but... I can't protect him anymore._ "

"That's why I'm here, isn't it?" Ace grinned with all the fierce joy had had learned from Luffy as a child, from his ship-brothers and crew and Oyaji's lessons as a free man of the ocean. "To do what you can't. I'm a pirate, kiddo. I've been to the New World and I've almost mastered Haki. Just watch, I'll turn the brat into a monster that will terrify the _world_."

" _I was offered a choice_." The faint smile was outlined in silver, and Ace could see that his counterpart had lived a far sadder life than he had. This kid had died long before he realized that he had the right to live and be happy about being alive. " _I chose Luffy. I will_ always _choose Luffy... and you understand that. You're stronger than me. Happier. You'll be able to help him reach his dream. I was too angry. Too blinded by the poison in other people's words. You were able to overcome that legacy of hate so... I made a trade._ "

Ace saw the sorrow, the love, the barely checked violence born in anger and hopelessness. "You would've done fine if you'd stuck around and had the chance to grow up a little. Luffy loves you, and that's all the proof you need."

" _Luffy didn't… he doesn't have the time to wait for me to get my shit together. So. I traded my life, and made a gamble with Fate._ " The younger Ace swallowed, fresh pain in his eyes as he reached for his little brother and was unable to touch him, fingertips blurring into mist against the bandages. " _My life, in exchange for your power. My memories, to bind your mind to my body. I'm sorry in advance about the nightmares but there are worse prices we could have paid for your resurrection._ "

"I'm used to bad nights, don't worry about it." Ace sighed and pulled the threadbare blanket up higher around Luffy's shoulders. "So are you going to be sticking around, or...?"

The spirit shrugged. " _I can't move on while my body's alive. I thought I'd just... sleep. Until it's our time again._ "

"Stick around." Ace knew the grin he was wearing was more than a little mad and terrifying, but this was _awesome_. "Two heads are better than one, and four eyes are better than two. Especially with a little brother like Luffy to look after. You want to see him grow up, ne? You can help me, since our memories are different."

" _You_ want _me to haunt you?_ " The ghost looked confused, but his eyes drifted back to Luffy again, and his gaze softened. "... _He is a handful, isn't he? Alright. I'll stick around to help. I don't know what you think I'll be able to do, but I'll stay._ "

"Awesome." Ace yawned and lay back down. "Keep watch, would you, brother? We'll plan some more in the morning."

The ghost's laugh was bitter and joyless and hurt to hear. " _Go to sleep, idiot._ "

'Gonna have to fix that.' Ace yawned and rolled over to curl around Luffy. 'Brothers aren't supposed to leave brothers hurting like that...'

=/=

So this is my take on "Ace survives Marineford." It's probably nothing like what you were expecting.


	2. It's the first day

Those Who Favour Fire

A One Piece Fanfiction

By: Sanjuno Shori Niko

=/=

 **(In which Ace has the first day of the rest of his life.)**

Luffy was too weak to move much in the morning after Ace's resurrection, so Ace just sighed and less-than-reluctantly sacrificed one of his shirts to make a harness. (It was a better fate than the shirt deserved. Horrible things, shirts.) They needed to find out who had survived the Marine purge, and how much of the island was damaged, but Ace refused to leave Luffy vulnerable and undefended. There was no telling if all their enemies had left the island or if there were still some Cipher Pol agents hanging around. Ace needed to keep Luffy close if he wanted to keep his little brother safe. Ace's flames roiled under his skin while dark worries plagued his thoughts, speeding along his already impressive healing. (The dead Ace had not been a logia, so Sakazuki had not used Haki in addition to his magma ability. The scabbed over tunnel of burns still hurt, but they were not deadly to the fire logia... not any more at least. The strike to his torso was placed lower and further to the right side than the deathblow Ace remembered dying from. _Sakazuki had wanted this Ace to die slow and in agony._ There was no other explanation for missing lungs, heart, and spine when the Ace here had been East Blue weak and mostly self-trained.)

" _... He dragged our body here alone after the Marines left._ " Ace looked at his ghost-self in surprise. It was the first thing the younger Ace had said that morning. The spectre looked like he very much wanted to kill something with extreme bloody prejudice. " _He had to hide under our corpse as it cooled, while the Marines laughed. He hasn't eaten since before the attack and... it took… it took a full night and day for the deal to go through. We had to wait for the green flash to make the exchange._ "

"Damn. Oi, Luffy." Ace looked over his shoulder at his sleepy-eyed little brother. "Are you hungry?"

"Un! Starving!" Luffy nosed at Ace's shoulder with insistent little head butts. "Can we have meat?"

"Of course!" Ace laughed, leaping down from the tree house. The lofty hut was better made and better hidden than the one Ace had grown up in, which was probably why the Marines had missed it. They were in a different part of the forest too, higher up the mountain than the Bandit camp, far from any established trails... The other Ace had probably built the new tree house when Luffy showed up, given how the tree house was closer to the Village than Grey Terminal. Ace had thought about doing that himself, once upon a time. The first tree house had been too small for three growing boys, but after Sabo was gone Ace had not been able to bear the thought of leaving behind the house Sabo had helped him build. The extra years must have helped the other Ace be rational, rather than trapped in place by sentiment. Ace grinned and struck out into the forest after getting his bearings. (It had been four years since he had last walked these woods, but he still knew exactly where he was.) "You'll get lots of meat, baby brother! How else are you supposed to heal and get stronger?"

"Yatta! Meat!" Luffy, assured that he would get his preferred meal, promptly began to chant one of his enharmonic made-up-on-the-spot songs. This one, naturally, focusing on the awesome powers of meat and big brothers. Ace tried not to feel flattered, but it was so innocently charming that the pirate was hard pressed to resist the urge to suffocate his baby brother with cuddles.

'So cute.' Ace whined to himself, steeling his will to stay strong. Shaking his head at his own ridiculousness (but to be fair, he had forgotten how _goddamned adorable_ tiny Luffy was) and headed out for the closest hunting spot. 'I can hear the brother complex jokes already.'

/.../

Once Luffy had consumed twice his own body weight in meat, the rubber boy passed out, snoring gently against Ace's back. The older D smiled and buried what little remained of their kill. (Usually he did not bother, trusting the scavengers to clean up after them in due time, but right now there was still the lingering concern that the Marines had stuck around.) Clean up finished, the logia user set off for the bandit camp, dreading what he would find and wanting to get the worst over with before Luffy woke up.

The bandit camp was too still and far too quiet for comfort. Ace sat high in a tree, examining what he could see of bullet holes, the gouges caused by blades, the broken windows and wrecked doors. The ground was burned around lumps of glassy rock. Magma, cooled down enough to revert back to stone. He stretched his Observation Haki as far as it could go, narrowing his eyes at the lack of results. Ace glanced at his ghost. "How far away from me can you get?"

" _... I'm not sure._ " The ghost tilted his head with a faint smile. " _Should we find out?_ "

"Check for baby den-den-mushi. The Marines may have left the place watched just in case of survivors." Ace scowled at the bandit camp. They may have been horrible at child rearing, but they had been the only parental force Ace had known during his childhood, and it broke something inside Ace to know that he would never see them again, leaving his mind disquieted. "The longer the Marines think we're dead, the better off we'll be."

" _On it_." The spectre flickered as he flowed away, more and more like a heat mirage the further from Ace he got. Ace remained crouched and still on his arboreal perch. The air next to him cooled after a few minutes, and Ace cocked an eyebrow at his doppelganger. (Ace fought back a surge of anger. He was just a kid, still lean to the point of scrawny without the muscle Ace had started packing on at twenty, and nowhere near his full growth. The Marines had _murdered him_!) The spirit shook his head. " _I don't think the Marines left anything behind, but they wrecked the place so I'm not sure..._ "

"You don't have my experience with what to look for, but you'll learn." Ace grinned and shook a finger at his younger self. "Follow along. I'll just be careful for now, but I think we'll have to risk it."

Ace crept into the silent camp, every sense alert for danger. Softly, Ace murmured to his ghost-self, pointing out places where traps and spying equipment were likely to be. Even after he found the first body, Ace did not stop. Even when he found _Dadan's_ body (what was _left_ of Dadan's body) he did not stop.

" _... Are you going to bury them?_ " The spectre's face was blank as he stared down at the pitiful remains of the dreadful bandit leader who had kept them alive during their most vulnerable years. (Hindsight granted clarity. If Dadan had really hated him, why had she raised him through infancy? Yes, she had violently encouraged him to be self sufficient, but she had never let him starve. Ace had seen the weakness that plagued people who had suffered prolonged malnutrition in infancy, and that was never one of Ace's problems. Dadan may have lacked overt affection, but she had never stinted him of her care. Not the mother Ace had wanted, fuck no, but certainly the mother he had _needed_ to get strong enough to survive in Paradise.)

"No. Moving the bodies would tell someone that we've been here." Ace collected what he could use from the bandit camp, including the contents of the hidden treasury. Once he and Luffy set out to sea they would need the funds, and the dead had no use for belli. "I can't just leave them to rot, either. Not only would Dadan probably haunt me, but human bodies cause sickness in the living if they aren't properly taken care of."

" _So what are you going to do?_ " The ghost watched as Ace headed for the forge where the bandits had made the bullets for their guns.

"Pirates are given back to the sea, but Dadan was a bandit, a fighter… and warriors deserve a pyre. I'm going to burn them." After a moment of consideration, Ace kicked in the side of the brick forge. The flame logia ignored the cascade of embers that pooled around his feet. Instead, Ace walked away, fire flaring to hungry life in his wake. It did not take much coaxing from Ace to spread the fire through the whole camp. The pirate let the flames rage as he moved his collection of scavenged goods and valuables to a storage cave near the tree house.

Luffy was starting to stir from his food-and-healing coma by the time Ace was done, so the older D checked to be certain the burning camp would not threaten their section of the woods before hunting down lunch. Ace managed to convince Luffy to eat a few wild vegetables with his meat this time. The younger D fell straight back into a doze once he was done eating, and Ace recognized the pattern. Luffy would sleep and eat in repeating cycles until he had healed a bit more. Truly, the D constitution was a wondrous thing. The elder brother felt a bit bad for being relieved by the situation, but Luffy being quiet and still made it easier for Ace to gather the things they needed in order to escape East Blue.

"Hm... we should check the village now." Ace looked over at his ghostly double's pained expression and bit his lip. Going back to the scene of your death had to be hard. (Thank fuck Ace had a valid reason to avoid the ever loving hell out of Marineford.) "I'm sorry."

" _It needs to be done_." The spectre looked away. " _Go. Before Luffy wakes up_."

/.../

Foosha village was worse than the bandit camp had been. Maybe it was because Ace could tell that the bandits had fought back against their killers. The villagers were civilians, used to the Marines trained under Garp's rough, idiotic honesty and Fist of Love. Sakazuki's men had slaughtered them like sheep. (Ace tried to avoid looking at the bodies. Tried to avoid seeing the familiar faces. Tried to avoid noticing when the crumpled forms were smaller than even Luffy.) 'Like shooting fish in a barrel. They didn't even have a chance to run.'

The Party Time Bar had been reduced to rubble, small fires still burning throughout the village from kitchen stoves left unattended and knocked over oil lamps. Ace's gaze flickered over the damage, and he sighed. 'Canon fire. They shot at the village. Two more Admirals and they'd have made it a Buster Call.'

Swallowing hard, Ace circled around the bar. He needed to check the docks for an intact skiff. If Ace could not find a ship in one piece, he would need to find some way to pull up one that could be repaired enough to get them to the next island. Hopefully it would not come to that, because Ace and Luffy _needed_ to get off Dawn Island (and hopefully out of East Blue) _unnoticed_.

A ping against his Haki, like a fingernail flicking a crystal glass to check for flaws. Ace froze and stretched his Observation Haki to the limit. She was hidden, and still hiding, but not from him. Not from _him_. Boots skidding over shattered brick and charred timber, Ace bolted for the well house behind the bar. 'Not in, but near enough to access the water… The bootlegger closet!'

Ace heaved the remains of a tiled roof aside, digging until he found the hidden door. The lock and hinges burned away from the cracked wood under the flames focused into knives from the tips of his fingers, and Ace hauled the door aside with a wide grin, reaching down into the dark hole as ash-smudged and blood-stained hands reached up for him in return. "Makino!"

"... Ace-kun?" The bartender's eyes went wide and filled with relieved tears. "You're alive! Oh, thank god! I saw what they did... oh, thank god! You're alive!"

"So're you." Ace choked on a laugh and hauled the woman up out of her hiding spot and into a relieved hug. "How bad are you hurt?"

"Nothing serious. A few grazes, mostly. Some bruises and little burns." Makino's gaze locked onto the bandages wrapped around Ace's otherwise-bare chest as she pulled back enough to look the young man over. "I saw what _that man_ did to you, Ace-kun. How..."

"I'm tough, and Marines have bad aim." Ace grinned and ignored the pull in his chest that told him to _slow the fuck down_ and stop overextending himself. Right now Ace was held together by bandage tape, Armament Haki, and fervent prayers. Even without considering the time he had spent mostly dead, or taking the side effects of magical cross-dimensional resurrections into account, Ace needed to rest and heal as much as Luffy did after the massive blood loss and major organ damage he had suffered, but there was _no time_. "Luffy's going to go nuts once he wakes up and sees that you're okay."

"Luffy-kun?" Makino's eyes followed Ace's thumb to where the boy rested on his brother's back. "Is he alright?"

"He was scared, and he got hurt, and he saw things that... well. You know what he saw. But he's healing, and he's Luffy." Ace smiled at the bartender's look of worry. "He's _Luffy_ , Makino-san. As long as he has us, he'll be okay. For now, though, we need to focus on getting off of this island. Gramps can't protect us any longer. For now, the Marines think that Luffy and I are dead. They probably don't care much about you, but if they come back while Luffy and I are still here, or if someone from Goa ratted you out..."

"I know." Makino swallowed harshly and looked at the ruins of the village. "I knew that there were different types of pirates. I didn't think that the Marines were the same way. At least Morganeers and Peace Mains call themselves different things."

Ace was silent, allowing the bartender time to gather her thoughts. Makino had taught a younger Ace a lot about manners and tolerance and forgiveness. Ace did not think Makino would be forgiving this.

"They burned the harbour." Makino slid her hand into Ace's grip as they turned away, offering the young man a wan smile. "But I have a small ship hidden up the coast. I don't think the Marines would have found it. It should be big enough to fit the three of us."

"... I didn't think you ever left the island." Ace tilted his head to look at Makino as they set off along the path that led away from the destroyed village.

"I bought it when Luffy-kun first came to live with me." Makino's lips thinned in disapproval. "I hid it away when Garp-san moved Luffy-kun into Dadan-san's care. I've kept it dry-docked ever since, but it's otherwise ready for immediate voyage."

"So..." Ace helped Makino over a fallen tree and wordlessly handed her a knife so she could hack off the ragged remains of the skirt that tangled around her legs. Ace cleared his throat and looked up at the trees until she was done. "Did you ever trust kuso-Jiji to keep him safe?"

"No." Skirt trimmed to just above her knees, Makino handed back Ace's knife, her eyes hard. "Especially not when I found out about you. He should never have exposed your parentage to anyone if he truly wanted to pass you off as his grandson, but especially not to bandits."

"I thought you liked Dadan?" Ace kept his voice mild, hiding his surprise. This was a side of Makino that Ace had never seen before. Angry, critical, but still protective of Luffy and Ace.

"I'm a bartender, Ace-kun. That means that I never turn away customers, and I'm very good at faking a pleasant face." Makino sighed and gave Ace a rueful smile, leading the way down the coastline with firm strides despite the ugly black-and-blue bruising that covered most of her right leg. "I'm afraid that I'm not a good enough person to mourn a woman who can abandon the child entrusted into her care in the woods."

"She protected us, in her own way." Ace looked at his ghost self, seeing the wrecked expression on the younger version of his own face. Ace recalled his nightmare, and remembered a bandit hoard diving into fire to save some stupid-ass little punks trying to fight adult pirates. "None of the bandits gave us up to the Marines. It got them all killed, trying to buy us time."

"I know, Ace-kun, but this and that are two very different things." Makino turned and led Ace towards the water. "I can be thankful that she fought to protect you while still being angry at her for not taking proper care of you."

"... That sounds confusing." Ace mused aloud, listening to his invisible double mutter about headaches and crazy women as Ace followed Makino into a cave located in a shallow cove. The mouth of Makino's cave was hidden behind a landslide, but Ace could clear that away easily. As Makino had said, the ship was small. It was a pincke meant to be crewed by only two or three people, although one person could get away with crewing solo if the day was calm or it was an emergency. It was well maintained, designed for Blue Ocean travel, and fully stocked with all a person could want during an emergency evacuation. Not a ship meant to move fast or fight, but the shallow draft meant they could escape up rivers when they wanted to anchor out of sight. A good ship for being sneaky and avoiding notice. Ace handed Luffy over to Makino and started going over the ship for trouble spots. Makino watched in amusement, not bothering to ask where Ace had learned so much about ship safety.

"Well?" Makino raised a brow as Ace jumped down from the deck.

"We should probably reseal the hull before we leave, just as a precaution." Ace dusted off his hands and grinned at Makino. "We can use the curing time to hunt meat and move our stores on to the ship. Luffy can use the time to heal before we set out, too."

"When shall we leave then, Ace-kun?" Makino smiled at Ace's enthusiasm.

"A week, maybe a few days more, it depends on the weather." Ace shrugged one shoulder and took his little brother back from the bartender. "We can stay in the tree house until then."

=/=

AN: So apparently this is how Ace and Luffy deal with EPIC TRAUMA FEELS! I'm getting the impression that Ace doesn't quite... well, I feel like Ace doesn't think that this whole resurrection deal is a real thing that is really happening. That might explain some of his handwaving. Dunno. I guess we'll have to wait and see.

I managed to get 's doc manager to cooperate long enough to upload this. For some reason doesn't want to let me upload anything these days. Please go to my AO3 page to check for updates, since I don't have any problems to complain about with that site.


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